Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin Archiv

Die Fotografin Anna Poubová ist der erste Gast in unserer Podcast-Reihe im neuen Jahr. Sie studiert seit 2016 Photographie an der Universität der Künste Berlin in der Klasse von Prof. Ursula Neugebauer und wurde 2020 mit dem IBB-Preis für Photographie (Anerkennung) ausgezeichnet. Mit Anna Poubová sprechen wir vor allem über Ihr Projekt Satellitendorf, mit welchem Sie den Anerkennungspreis der Investitionsbank Berlin gewonnen hat.

Deswegen haben wir für den Podcast auch wieder einen zweiten Gast eingeladen, der zum Thema der neu bebauten Vororte aus der Perspektive eines Architekturtheoretikers etwas zu sagen hat. Ondřej Hojda ist Wissenschaftler und Kurator im Bereich der Architekturgeschichte, Urbanismus und Kunst. Im Moment arbeitet er am Institut für Kunstgeschichte an der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Prag und lehrt an der Technischen Universität in Liberec. Und auch er hat einige Jahren seines Lebens in Berlin verbracht.

Mehr über das Projekt Satellitendorf: https://karl-hofer-gesellschaft.de/ibb_preis/anna-poubova

Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin: https://berlin.czechcentres.cz/de/projects/contemporary-czech-art-in-berlin

Die letzte Ausgabe unserer Reihe Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin in diesem Jahr widmen wir dem Maler Roman Liška. Er lebt in Berlin und arbeitet als künstlerischer Mitarbeiter von Prof. Jana Gunstheimer am Lehrstuhl für experimentelle Malerei und Zeichnung der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Dort haben sie gemeinsam das Institut für regionale Realitätsexperimente “IRRE” gegründet.

Mehr können Sie hier erfahren:

roman-liska.de

uni-weimar.de/de/kunst-und-gestaltung/professuren/experimentelle-malerei-und-zeichnung

irre-bauhaus.de

Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin: berlin.czechcentres.cz/de/projects/contemporary-czech-art-in-berlin

In der 13. Folge von Comtemporary Czech Art in Berlin stellen wir den Maler Lubomír Typlt vor, der zu den bekannten Vertretern der tschechischen zeitgenössischen figurativen Malerei zählt und ein ehemaliger A.R. Penck- Schüler ist.

Noch bis Ende November sind nun seine aktuellen Werke in der Galerie c&k in Mitte zu sehen. In dieser Folge sprechen wir auch mit der Galeristin Christiane Bühling über Typlts ArbeitenWerke. Die Ausstellung trägt den Titel Somnabul und kann mittwochs bis freitags 12-18 Uhr und samstags 12-16 Uhr besucht werden.

Mehr können Sie hier erfahren: www.cundkgalerie.de und www.typlt.com

In the 12th episode of Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin we present SUMO Prague 2020, an international gallery cooperation that led to a three-day showcase of contemporary art in Prague in September. Nine local galleries were hosting exhibitions and an accompanying program curated in collaboration with partner institutions from abroad. The project aims to present new forms of international art to the local audience, often created by artists whose work has never been presented in the local context. Furthermore, SUMO helps to foster international cooperation in the field of contemporary art as well as establish new networks and further promote exchange between artists, curators, art critics and other art world professionals. The SUMO project is organized by The Alliance of Czech Contemporary Art Galleries. Three Germany-based galleries took part in this year's SUMO festival, two of them are from Berlin - Meyer Riegger gallery and Horse & Pony.

About SUMO we spoke with Camille Hunt, who is together with Kacha Kastner in charge of the gallery hunt kastner in Prague.

You can find out more about SUMO on their website https://sumoprague.cz.

The first artist with Czech origins who we will present after the summer break in the series Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin is Jan Smejkal (born 1948 in Beroun, CZ).

Jan Smejkal studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague in 1967 and then continued his studies at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from1968. He is mostly interested in the process of capturing moments in his drawings and transmitting them into paintings. Since 2000 he lived for about twenty years in Berlin and together with his partner Ljuba Beránková he ran the gallery space Bleibtreu.

In his work, he focuses on the capturing of different records of impressions, impulses, pieces of things, details on postcard format papers, which he produces wherever he is and creates a huge archive with drawn memories. These records are then transmitted to paintings, text walls or postcards. He applies words in different ways on a monochromatic canvas so that the viewer himself can compose his own sentences. The paintings with inscriptions should be understood as a whole.

He presented some paintings on this year's Positions at the booth of the Hilgemann.art Gallery. We took that as an occasion to make this interview and Instagram Takeover.

You can find more info on Jan Smejkal on his website: https://jan-smejkal.com

In the 10th issue of the series Contemporary Czech Art Sim Binko talks to Jakub Valenta, who is an artist and software developer. He has been living in Berlin for the last four years.

Most of Jakub’s projects are digital, usually presented as a web page, in an intentionally unaesthetic form, or using common technology such as a calendar app, Google documents, emojis, or Twitter. He often creates periodically updated collections of material he discovers. Jakub’s work can be seen as a series of short comments on our current society with a sense of appreciation for the bizarre aspects of everyday life. Several of his projects take a personal point of view and test the boundaries of privacy. In this interview we speak e.g. about his corona-inspired art project on Twitter, where he collects chances and opportunities, that covid-19 gives us. Or about the 35 emojis that go beyond the hugs and kisses of the standard emoji set and why he addedan emoji of the typical czech meal Svíková.

More about this episode, Jakub Valenta and the whole series on our webiste: http://berlin.czechcentres.cz/uber-uns/neue-meldungen/3x3jakubvalenta

Photo: Jakub Valenta: Real Emoji (2019)

In der neunten Ausgabe von Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin stellen wir die Malerin und Fotografin Eliška Bartek vor, die 1972 nach Westdeutschland geflüchtet ist und seitdem in Berlin und im Tessin lebt. Sie beschreibt im Interview sehr lebendig, wie ihr die Coronakrise den Abschluss ihrer dreijährigen Arbeit am Buch "Diario di Maggia" schwer gemacht hat, wie schwierig es für sie war, künstlerisch Fuß auf dernoch von nationalem Verständnis geprägten schweizer Kunstszene zu fassen und wie sie dann ihr Glück in Berlin gefunden hat.

Mehr zu dieser Episode und zur Reihe auf unserer Website: http://berlin.czechcentres.cz/uber-uns/neue-meldungen/3x3eliska-bartek

Abb.: Eliška Bartek: 24 Luglio 2014. Aus der Serie Diario di Maggia, Aquarell, 2014

In the 8th issue of Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin, we would like to introduce Adéla Součková. Since we are slowly getting back to regular workflow at the Czech Centre, we will prepare new interviews for the series Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin every two weeks.

Adéla Součková (*1985) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Painting Studio II / Vladimír Skrepl School) and from Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden (Studio of Ulrike Grossarth). Součková’s essential means of expression is drawing and painting, however, she also expresses herself through performance, object installations and video. In her work, she draws on the tension between nature and culture, old mythologies and archetypes as well as on the current debate on the themes of ecology and feminism. Součková regularly exhibits primarily at independent galleries in the Czech Republic and in Germany. In 2017 she had a solo show On the Earth awakening from a restless dream at the Czech Centre in Berlin. In 2014 and 2015, she was a finalist of the Critics’ Award for Young Painters and 2018 a finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for young artists under 30. She was artist in residence at Art in General in New York, in Sesama in Indonesia, at the Awagami Factory in Japan or recently, in Madrid and Tbilisi as a part of the project The Dictionary of New Ideas. She lives and works in Prague and Berlin.

You’ll find more about the artist at her website or Instagram. You can visit the virtual exhibition Technology of Sacred, created during Corona times as an alternative to exhibition planned for display.cz, curated by Lukas Likavčan, designed by The Rodina under this link: sacred.display.cz. Please take the first door to the left and you will see Adélas installation of not really downloaded location signs fetishes, given voice by her lyrics and laloni georgian polyfonic choir lead by Naneishvili Nino. The next edition of The New Dictionary of Old Ideas will open on 18th of June in TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland. Adéla Součková will present in the ex-turbine hall quite a monumental installation of drawing on textile.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.

Photo: Adéla Součková: What is the matter thoughts are made from? — Jindrich Chalupecky Award Exhibition, National Gallery in Prague, 2018, indigo dye on fabric, metal, clay, audio, procession. Photo: Peter Fabo

In the 7th issue of Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin we would like to introduce Petra Hermanová. Petra Hermanová (*1987 in Valašské Meziříčí, CZ) is a visual artist and musician. She studied with Václav Stratil at the Studio of Intermedia at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno and at the Studio of Art in Public spaces at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where she concentrated mostly on exploring the moving image through narrative experiments dealing with memories. In 2012 she relocated to Berlin and has since gone on to produce music videos for Academy Award winning musicians like Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as well as for underground electronic musicians on labels like Cómeme and Studio Barnhus. She has taken her visuals to live concert events at notable festivals and event series such as Sónar, CYNETART and Boiler Room, and has taken part on numerous commissions including reviving the ghost town of Pyramiden in the arctic archipelago of Svalbard for a special project with the Norwegian electronic duo Frost. As a practicing musician Hermanová was the front woman of Fiordmoss. She represented the band at the Red Bull Music Academy in Madrid and won the Vinyla Award for Best New Act in 2011. They produced 3 albums, the last of which was awarded the prestigious Czech Anděl Award for the Best Electronic Album of 2017. She is currently working on independent projects in music and animation, as well as producing A/V for the Berlin-based music producer Hydropsyche.

More about her work on her website petrahermanova.com or on Instagram @petrahermanova.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.

Photo: Petra Hermanová: Selfportrait (Love in the Time of C̷h̷o̷l̷e̷r̷a̷) — 2020

In the 6th issue of the series Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin we will introduce the curatorial collaborative.

Helena and Jana describe curatorial collaborative as an agency for presentation, communication and mediation of art and architecture focusing on finding innovative means of mediation and display. Through art and architecture networks they try to advance the discourse on curation in the Czech Republic and internationally. They are based in Prague and Berlin.

Helena Doudová is a curator and art historian. Currently she works as a curator of the Architecture Collection at the National Gallery in Prague. She cooperated on the Creative Europe project “Shared Cities: Creative Momentum”. Moreover she worked as a research and curatorial fellow of the International Museum Program on an exhibition of infographics in the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig. She also initiated and curated, among others, the exhibition “Baugruppe ist super!” in the Kvalitář Gallery in Prague.

Jana Doudová studied humanities at Charles University in Prague and curatorial studies at University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem. Jana is a co-founder of theinformal art platform UMA: You Make Art, which focuses on mediation of contemporary art to the general public. She cooperated on the show “Baugruppe ist super!” with Helena. After an internship at ZK/U - Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Jana moved to Berlin, where she currently works as a freelance curator at nomadicArt, curatorial collaborative and (e)Studio Migra.

You can find out more about their projects on the website: curatorialcollaborative.net.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.

In this issue of the series Czech Conteporary Art in Berlin we would like to introduce Julia Gryboś (*1988, PL) and Barbora Zentková (*1986, SK). They are an artistic duo, working together since 2010. They met during their studies at Ostrava Faculty of Arts and continued with their studies already as a duo at the faculty of Arts in Brno. They made themselves known to wider audiences mainly in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia, where they were awarded the Oskár Čepan Award for young artists in 2016. In 2019 they completed the Berlin Sessions Residency and a residency at ZK/U, the Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin. These were the impulse for them to stay in Berlin. In their work, they examine the impact of the neoliberal chase after non-stop productivity. They are interested in the symptoms of the diseased society. One of the returning motifs in their work is the topic of tiredness and its depiction. They create site specific objects and environments, often out of old metal constructions and some textiles. These environments are often accompanied by live sound performances. Find out more about the work of Julia Gryboś and Barbora Zentková on their website and instagram.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.

In this issue of the series Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin we will introduce the multimedia artist Martin Kohout.

Martin Kohout was born 1984 in Prague, he graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU, Department of Cinematography) and from the Städelschule in Frankfurt (Simon Starling Studio). He also spent two years studying at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (classes of Alicja Kwade, Gregor Schneider). He works and lives in Berlin and currently he is an assistant teacher at the Studio of Photography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

His multimedia work reacts to various life situations, the incomprehensibility of the contemporary world and the inability of individuals to navigate in it. Kohout’s major theme is the medium of the internet and the self-reflection of man in global communication which brings conflicting experience – intimacy and aggression, self-confidence and helplessness.

In the past years, he has introduced his work in the Czech as well as international context at solo and collective exhibitions, e.g. in New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and Sofia. At the Czech Centre in Berlin, his work was part of the exhibition “Healing” curated by Tereza Jindrová in 2018.

In 2010, he was one of the finalists of Germany’s Marler Videokunst-Preis. In 2008, he won the Other Visions Award at the Festival of Film Animation in Olomouc, Czech Republic. In 2014 he was nominated for and in 2017 he won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, the recognized Czech award for young artists under the age of 35.

If you want to learn more about Martin Kohouts artworks, have a look at his website, watch an interview with him about the award winning video "Slides" from 2017 or this video-interview by AQNB Production from 2015 . And check out his galleries, Polansky Gallery in Prague and the EXILE Gallery in Berlin and the website of his publishing house tltr.biz. On Instagram you find Martin Kohout as well as the publishing house.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.

Photo: Martin Kohout: Slides, 2017 (videostill, Asli and Sung)

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin mit Manuel Stehli

Unser nächster Gast in der online-Reihe Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin ist der Maler Manuel Stehli. Er ist zwar in Zürich geboren und aufgewachsen, ein Großteil seiner Familie ist aber in Tschechien. Aktuell lebt und arbeitet er in Berlin und Zürich.

Manuel Stehli hat an der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig und an dem Camberwell College of Arts in London studiert. 2019 warer Finalist für den Kunstpreis Junger Westen und 2018 war er einer der Finalisten der Berlin Masters Ausstellung für Künstler*innen unter 30, die in Berlin leben und arbeiten.

Seine Bilder stellen oft einsame Personen in sehr leeren, minimalistischen bis steril wirkenden Umgebungen dar. Auch die dargestellten Personen und Landschaften wirken anonymisiert bis entpersonalisiert. Sie scheinen ein flaches Abbild der Realität zu sein.

Mehr über Manuel Stehli auf seiner Website, seinem Instagram-Account oder hier.

In kurzen Interviews stellen wir in der Reihe Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin zeitgenössische Künstlerinnen und Künstler mit Wurzeln in Tschechien und/oder der Slowakei vor. Kreative, die schon länger oder erst seit Kurzem in Berlin leben.

Das Format des Gesprächs heißt 3x3: Die ersten 3 Minuten sprechen wir über den Ort, wo die KünstlerInnen arbeiten. Die nächsten 3 Minuten dann darüber, was sie im Moment beschäftigt, und schließlich erfahren wir in 3 Minuten etwas Interessantes über die Künstlerin oder den Künstler.

Visuelle Eindrücke von der Arbeit der Künstler und Künstlerinnen werden dann über einen Takeover des Instagram Accounts des Tschechischen Zentrums vermittelt, der immer dienstags ab 14 Uhr, zeitgleich mit der Veröffentlichung eines Podcasts, stattfindet.

Abb.: Manuel Stehli: ohne Titel, 2019, 170x220cm, Öl auf Leinwand

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin with Hošek Contemporary

This time we present with Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin not an artist, but a Czech gallery owner. Petr Hošek, founder of Hošek Contemporary, relocated to Berlin in 2014 and opened a little gallery in Berlin-Mitte, close to the theatre Volksbühne. In 2018 he moved to a special place - an old freighter, where his gallery Hošek Contemporary still resides. Petr Hošek was born in 1988 in the Czech republic, he studied art history and the theory of art in Prague and Madrid before he received his MA at Charles’ University in Prague. His MA thesis explored a possibility of presenting Post-Internet Art within the Physical Gallery Spaces. After curatorial residency in New York City with Residency Unlimited in 2012, he worked in cooperation with Prague based gallery Futura and later he co-founded Gallery Plevel which focused on presenting on-line art in a refurbished 19th century industrial space.

After his move to Berlin in 2014 he founded the gallery Hošek Contemporary, which we focus on in our talk, this time in English.

Find out more about the gallery on their website, Facebook or Instagram or in this Short End Podcast.

Czech Contemporary Art in Berlin is an online series by the Czech Centre Berlin about contemporary art in times of Corona. We present artists with Czech and/or Slovak roots, living in Berlin. The format is 3x3: 3 minutes about the place, where the artist works, 3 minutes about what keeps them busy right now and 3 minutes about themselves. In order for you to also see some of their work, they take over the Czech Centre’s Instagram account on the afternoon after 2 pm on the day, the podcast is published.